The true monstrosity in TALES FROM THE CRYPT is the decor, with Joan Collins’ suburban house of horrors taking the less-than-ideal home prize.

Joan bludgeons her husband to death with a poker on Christmas Eve, causing him to spurt poster paint onto his Burley Observer, but she’s had the misfortune to do this as another burly observer is on the loose, a hulking escaped lunatic dressed as Santa.

Robert Zemeckis remade this for the TFTC TV series, and his version had a lot of kinetic running about and a certain amount of padding. Freddie Francis directs the original with nicely judged compositions and one genuine shock. Plus the hilarious gag of the blood-soaked bubbles going down the drain, which form the colours of a Santa suit and beard.

Freddie Francis, appearing at the Edinburgh Film Festival some years back (when he was alive), said that in his horror films he had always tried to splash the blood on extravagantly until it got silly, because he didn’t think these things should be taken seriously. Nowadays, the dribbling grue looks positively underdone, apart from its lurid hue.

Suddenly one realizes that the entire visual plan of the movie is riffing, Snow White style, on the Coke-colours of Santa’s costume, and the movie comes to seem far wittier than it had been. The humour is DARK, certainly…

Not an obvious choice for producer Milton Subotsky, one would have thought — a horror producer who disliked gore makes two compendium movies (this and VAULT OF HORROR) based on notoriously bloody American horror comics which had been banned in the UK fifteen years before. But of course they were very successful — following the earlier DR TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORROR they exploited the marquee value of a dozen or so name actors, each of whom only had to do a couple of days’ work.

Unlike most Amicus films, TFTC is a bit depressing, as every story takes place in a world of horrible people and cruelty. The innocents are there to be tormented, until they too turn vicious. It’s disturbing not just because it’s a darker vision of humanity, but because it has more in common with reality than the typical horror world-view of easily-recognized goodies and baddies. The theme is most powerfully illustrated in the Peter Cushing episode. This already has a creepy reality, since Cushing plays a windower and performs to a portrait of his real late wife, who is given her real name, Helen. His character is persecuted to suicide by a nasty neighbour, and Cushing revels in portraying uncomprehending agony. Freddie Francis, who up till now has seemed excited only by gliding his camera elegantly through awful rooms, and jibbing precisely across macro-details, is hypnotized by Cushing, lingering on his suffering face as if suddenly discovering a human connection.

The final episode reprises the dynamic of FREAKS — disabled people take a horrific revenge on a persecutor. Francis was a fan of Whale and Browning, and was disturbed by the fact that many horror fans didn’t know anything about them — they’re interest was purely in horror, in representations of violence. Nigel Patrick being made to run a razor-blade maze in the dark brings the movie’s fascination with horrible furnishings to a crescendo, centering as it does on the creation of one living hell (the unsympathetic asylum for the blind), then another (the maze). Francis pushes in on eyes and razors, a Bunuel by implication.

At the end of the movie, everyone’s in hell, especially Donald Sinden, who didn’t really do anything to deserve it and who didn’t actually die in his episode. You want logic? Go next door, they’re showing Rossellini’s SOCRATES.

Visiting Angels, the UK’s largest costume house, for the first time, I got entranced by their gallery of stills, many of them signed, showing movie and theatre stars of bygone days. I liked them particularly because they don’t seem to have been updated for aeons, and some luminaries still have pride of place despite having sunk to the status of subluminaries or even nonluminaries. Sinclair Hill, anyone? I may be unusual among visitors to Angels in that I was kind of thrilled to find a photo of the director of BRITANNIA OF BILLINGSGATE and the minor Jessie Matthews vehicle THE MAN FROM TORONTO.

Here are some better-known persons, some expressing their gratitude to Monty Berman, costumier-in-chief.

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee

Edward Fox — father of our leading man, Freddie Fox

Most of the costumes at Angels are on the racks, waiting to be used again, but two stand in pride of place: Indiana Jones, and this fellow. I would never have dared to touch its hem, but as I was taking a pic of a still of John Philip Law, I brushed against it, so now I can say I have done so.

I took lots of bad snaps, so if you want to see more (Hayley Mills! Hugh Williams!) just let me know.

“Larry is deeply, and I mean deeply, stupid,” says Orson Welles to Henry Jaglom. But it can’t have been altogether true, can it? Of course, some great artists may be brilliant in their own field and painfully naive outside of it, but I’d hold up Olivier’s first three films as evidence that he had something on the ball. Of course, they each have one foot in theatre, and so does their star — how could it be otherwise? But when a filmmaker like Polanski comes out and says Olivier was a great movie director, one should take notice.

I enjoyed Olivier’s RICHARD III in its splendidly restored Criterion release, looking brand new and almost painfully crisp. Fiona disliked his nose and didn’t stay for the rest. “It’s not human!” she protested. I pointed to Douglas Wilmer, down the cast list a bit, sporting a comparable schnozzola. “I think Larry saw that and said ‘Get me one of those.'” Both snouts proceed at a thirty degree angle like an exact continuation of the actors’ foreheads. I was still marveling at this feat of nature and the makeup department when Stanley Baker shows up with his brow overhanging dangerously, a cranial escarpment that defies gravity. His eyes look like they’re straining to hold it all up.

Olivier apparently felt he made a mistake casting Ralph Richardson, and wished he could have gotten Orson for the part of Buckingham. I see his problem — Richardson is a shade too real. While Gielgud makes a song out of everything, and Olivier is Mr. Punch made flesh, Richardson plays a political villain with no hint of artificial “characterisation” — he just says the words beautifully, guided by their rhythm, letting his steely, slightly mad stare hold our attention. Explaining his decision to use theatrical sets in HENRY V, Olivier said he feared otherwise the audience would say, “So that’s a house, and that’s a tree, and that’s a field; why is everyone talking so funny?” Heightened artifice in the production design matches Shakespeare’s blank verse. So the problem with Richardson is that his very convincing-ness isn’t in keeping. It’s not that he’s naturalistic — Richardson was slightly unreal even in real life — it’s just that he’s not one the (putty) nose, like everyone else. If Olivier’s Richard is a villain, what is Ralph? I expected him to turn out to be a good guy.

We also get a nubile Bernard Hepton (I think I spotted him blowing a bugle), also credited quaintly for “sword play”, but most enchanting are the murderers, played by Michaels Gough & Ripper, two giants of the Hammer horror realm which doesn’t even exist in 1955. But who could be better? I’m reminded that Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing are both in Olivier’s HAMLET, separately. Presumably, when I watch HENRY V again, I’m going to suddenly recognize Madeline Smith and Ingrid Pitt.

Towards the end, Richard draws the positions of his troops in the dust using his sword-point. And Olivier cuts to a wide of Bosworth Field, and the full-scale army is painted into place by a giant sword-tip, descending lightly from the heavens. Maybe it’s the kind of thing that, when you have something like it, you need to have a couple more things like it to make it fit into the overall style. But it’s brilliant and bold and breathtaking — this man is not stupid.